1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an athletic shoe having an improved structure of a portion surrounding a wearer's ankle and to a shoe tongue used for the athletic shoe.
2. Prior Arts
For fixing and protecting a wearer's ankle portion and improving close fitness to a foot and ankle, so-called high cut shoe having a structure, in which an opening for inserting a foot is formed at a higher position and the length of a shoe tongue is increased for covering the wearer's ankle, has been generally used.
However, such a high cut shoe is prone to lack stability and give unpleasant feeling to the wearer's instep since the tongue having an increased length is not firmly be secured on the wearer's instep while displaced outwardly and becomes deformed or wrinkled.
Further, since the adjusting section for fixing the ankle and fitting the shoe upper to the ankle portion is located at the front of the ankle, the fixation is limited to result in a problem that the shoe upper cannot be entirely and uniformly fitted to the ankle portion.
Moreover, another problem with such a high cut shoe is that it cannot be put on or taken off unless a shoe string at the front of the shoe upper is loosened, and thus it is laborious and time-consuming to put on or take off the shoe. In addition, it is difficult to put it on or take it off even after loosening the shoe string because the shoe upper is high.
Therefore, an object of the invention is to provide an athletic shoe capable of overcoming the foregoing drawbacks of the conventional high cut shoes and capable of protecting the wearer's ankle portion from physical troubles such as sprain and protecting Achilles' tendon during exercise by covering and fixing the ankle portion up to above the anklebone as well as enabling it extremely easy to put on or take off the shoe while providing excellent fit upon wearing.